in perfect fourths
by matchaball
Summary: Sai knows what it's like to be washed blank, to feel trapped and numbed in his own mind. He relapses into this mindset periodically, a force of habit he can't shake off even now. But there is no blankness with Ino and Ren; only the feeling of tilled earth and fresh starts and something promising ready to sink root and grow. [SaiIno, and Ino's mother]


1.

The cheerful ringing of chimes hanging by the door heralds his otherwise silent arrival. It takes Sai a moment to consider the crowded flower shop before movement behind the counter catches his immediate attention.

"Hello," a quiet, kind voice invites him in. It prompts Sai into movement and he shuts the door politely behind him before slipping between rows of white daffodils and daisies. With the sun lighting the place in honeyed slats, thick and golden, time seems to stand still as the white flowers stand motionless, their blank faces turned to catch the warmth.

The woman standing behind the counter greets him similarly, a warm smile lighting her typically stern expression into something much gentler and welcoming. If not for her sharp brown eyes, eyes Sai is more familiar with on Ino's face despite the difference in colour, he would think her a flower as much as any other in the shop, tall and regal in green and her brown hair crowned into sleek bun. She carries herself with the natural grace of flowers, in their silence and their patience.

"Yamanaka-sama," Sai greets her and gives a respectful bow.

"Sai, isn't it?" Ino's mother nods her head in turn, evidently pleased with his show of manners. "What can I do for you, Sai?"

"I would like to ask for employment at your flower shop," he returns without preamble. A beat follows his blunt request, but he stands unruffled, hands loose at his sides, his dark eyes reading the woman in front of him.

Her pupiless brown eyes are uncanny as she stares back, her expression thoughtful. As blank as he feels, Sai wonders what she finds in the flat line of his mouth, in the dark ink of his eyes, in the curtain of his bangs. She's spent a lifetime being a mother to Ino, a wife to Inoichi; she doesn't need the specialized Yamanaka jutsus to read others as well as she does.

"Post-war must be a slow time for shinobi, if you're coming here for a job," she comments, her warm tone mildly questioning.

With war over, most efforts were being put to rebuilding the infrastructure of the village; but for someone who's most useful as a hunter-nin, Sai is put on permanent standby, ready to call upon should he be needed. He's usually not though, so he often watches Naruto go on dates with Hinata; Sakura running to the hospital in the early hours of the morning and coming back late at night- if she comes back home that day at all; Ino swallowed up by Intelligence as she steps up to the role her father held before he died.

War changed a lot of things for him, many which Sai is still struggling to come to terms with. Since Naruto and Sakura- since Ino- Sai realizes he's not used to being alone anymore.

"I'm afraid it would have to be part time. Just until…" Puzzlement steals the rest of his words. He isn't even entirely sure why he came here to begin with, in a place where time seems to stand still, tended by a keeper he's somewhat arbitrarily choosing to place his faith in. He only knows that instinct points him here, to find… purpose, perhaps. Familiarity. He is dating Ino after all, and the flower shop is an extension of her.

None of those feels quite right. For all the time he's spent reading a dictionary, the term he wants eludes him.

"Just until, then," she nods. Sai finds understanding in her eyes and as much as he looks, he finds no pity. He wonders what she understands; he hardly knows himself.

She smiles then, and the wrinkles bracket her mouth like they're carrying a secret. "You may call me Ren."

2.

Despite his first impression, time blooms and fades in the flower shop like it does anywhere else.

The day starts very early in the morning, before the shop properly opens, and Sai is there as the sun begins to colour the dark skies in hazy streaks of pale orange and pink.

He unloads the frozen flowers from the delivery truck and stores the surplus in the freezers in the back. The flowers up front he rearranges and sorts, picking out crimson poppies and chrysanthemums that have bled dry and gathering them up to compost. Buckets are carefully drained before they are refilled with clean, fresh water. The older flowers he moves to the front of their respective buckets, to better catch the eyes of interested buyers.

The labour is more relaxing than taxing for him, but it's a lot to manage for one person, especially that of a civilian. Sai doesn't doubt Ren's strength for a moment, but he comes in earlier and stays later than needed to handle the extra work so she doesn't have to.

Part of it is courtesy and respect; a better part, a rise to meet some sort of expectation he intuites from her composed presence.

She doesn't comment, even at the first few times when she wakes up and comes into the flower shop from the adjoining house to find Sai already halfway through the work. Her gaze is unnerving, even as her tone is pleasant as she greets him good morning, and she doesn't break composure for a moment as she turns back around to disappear into the house once more.

The warm aroma of tea precedes her as she comes back out with a tray bearing a pot and two cups of green tea, freshly whisked.

This is routine, too. A quiet half hour shared between them both, with the faintest of sunlight beginning to colour the glass walls gold, or with rain drumming meditatively on the roof.

Sai doesn't know what to offer, so Ren fills the space with Ino's childhood stories. They are so full of life, so full of character that Sai doesn't know if it's Ren's storytelling abilities or Ino's strength of will, so vivacious and vibrant even as a memory, that paints the most compelling images in his mind. A bit a both, he assumes. Like mother, like daughter.

He draws as he listens, trying to match on paper what he sees in his mind. Black ink glides easily under his brush, which Ren also supplies when she spots him absentmindedly tracing images onto the tabletop as she speaks.

The first time Ren cries is when Sai shows her a portrait of Ino, young and all round shapes with toothy smiles, framed by an armful of wildflowers splashed black with his ink. She is effervescence and spirit in motion, caught in a still frame.

"You have a gift of seeing people, even if you don't understand them," Ren tells him, forthright in sincerity and clarity, even as her cheeks remain wet and her eyes grow heavy with nostalgia.

"I'm trying to find the emotions," he admits too easily to her. "All I can truly find is anger these days."

He wonders if the admission was a beat off from the rhythm of their conversation, but it's what he knows to be true and he still has trouble enacting subtlety.

"Why?" is all Ren asks. She carefully sets the drawing aside and folds her hands together, her warm brown eyes set earnestly on him. Her cheeks remain wet and Sai wonders if it's for his benefit, or if she is simply used to the sensation.

The same quality that motivates him to go above and beyond his simple duties as a flower shop worker for her nudges at his tightly furled mind, encouraging him to pick his wounds open again to feel disharmonious colour and pain spilling out once more.

He haltingly tells Ren of Shin, and he's aware of how impersonal and formal he sounds compared to her descriptions of Ino. Despite the positive force Shin had been in the very beginning for Sai, he registers as two lingering beats of aching anger in Sai's mind, both of deaths that were undeserved. Sai didn't think it would anger him so much, watching his brother slip between his fingers to a place he couldn't follow, yet again.

"Do you know what anger is?" Ren asks when Sai falls silent, drained and worn. He looks up, the dictionary definition dancing at the tip of his tongue. "It's one of the strongest emotions you can feel; but it's also one of the easiest. Ino became angry so easily when she was a young child. Well, you know how her temper can be even now. But the difference now is that she understands how to use her anger, and what it truly hides. Anger is your reaction, but not truly your emotion."

The thought is… frightening. Anger, he acknowledges from her words, is easy; it hums even now in his veins, simmering in his mind.

"How does Shin make you _feel_ , Sai?" The question is pointed, but soft even as it arrows straight for his most vulnerable place.

He almost doesn't want to answer until he raises his head to glimpse at Ren. Her cheeks, still stained with tear tracks, are bare to him even as she sits tall and proud, affected but unbowed.

Her strength is one he takes heart from. He breathes, and he dives.

"Hurt," he finds. "And… and sad."

He sounds small. He feels small.

Small, calloused hands take hold of his, and the strength of her palms cradle and comfort him both. Wrinkles carve themselves deeper on Ren's face as she reaches for Sai, fresh tears collecting at the corners of her knowing eyes.

"It's ok," she admits quietly, "to cry, too."

3.

There is an ebb and flow to the tide of people that come in and out each day. Sai interacts minimally with them, directing people to particular flowers when asked, or exchanging a greeting or two. The one who welcomes them all warmly by name is Ren, who asks after their families, their businesses, their lives.

Most who come are civilians, picking up flowers for their stores or homes, or ordering a collection for an event: a wedding, a funeral, a baby shower. Sai feels rather out of his depth, glimpsing at this side of Konoha he rarely experiences, but he comes to understand what it is about them that people like Ren and Naruto love so.

They are as varied as the flowers he handles, different in tone and appeal but all full of colour and life.

More than once, he itches to pull his sketchbook out to try drawing in rainbows of watercolour or ink, instead of the steady monotones of greys and blacks. During lulls in his work, he indulges, and tries to control the splash of colour bleeding across the blank page.

His first few attempts are, in his eyes, amateur at best, though when Ino finds them he gives into her pleading eyes and gifts them to her. He finds them pinned up carefully on her walls in her office, and is amused and touched that she treasures his work so.

Colour theory is something he picks up from Ren as she shows him the art of arranging flowers. Her intuition is remarkable; her ability to articulate her process to him even more so.

Sai's first few bouquets are more copies of hers than anything else, but he learns quickly enough to start arranging a few bouquets of his own. Even if the colours blend well together, Ren double checks them all, since the particular meanings of flowers still escape him.

He's in the middle of putting together an arrangement of lilies and forget-me-nots before he looks up, expecting to see Ren's encouraging smile. Her back watches him instead, curved over the counter as her elbows rest on the surface, her face covered by her palms. Sai doesn't need to hear her to know that she is crying.

His hand jerks forward, unsure, and he rests it lightly and uneasily on the bow of her spine. His touch startles her and she jumps. His hand flees in an instant, as if it had never been there.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Sai," she sniffs quietly, blowing her nose and wiping her eyes before facing him. "Sometimes I remember Inoichi. I didn't think I'd miss him this much, but I do more every day." Grief weighs her down, ages her with unkind years in an instant, carving deeper lines in the corners of her face and slumping her strong shoulders down into frailty.

For as far as Sai has come in recognizing and handling emotions, grief is one he still fumbles in responding to. Still, he tries for this woman who has been nothing but open and understanding to him.

"Ino and I are going to the cenotaph later, to pay our respects. Would it help you, to come?" he offers.

"I think I may stay here, but thank you," she sighs, and her gaze slides off of him to look at the half arranged bouquet sitting between them.

Sai pauses, then adds another sprig of forget-me-nots. "For Inoichi-san," he explains.

Her smile is still watery, but the lines on her face ease into something a little softer, her eyes a little brighter. "He would've liked you."

"I think I would've liked him," he returns simply.

He doesn't think it's enough, what he's said and done to comfort her, but she straightens, and breathes, and moves on. Ren is nothing but gracious, he knows, but she can be transparent in emotion too, if he knows how to look for it. Sai looks now, and finds sorrow still, but mingled with gratitude for him.

When Ino comes later to pick him up, having left early from work, Ren waves him on with a laugh. "Be sure to tell Inoichi I say hello," she reminds them, and her smile has bittersweetness tucked in its corners. He leaves her with his purple apron, gathers the bouquet of lilies and forget-me-nots, and falls in step with Ino.

"So, what do you think? Getting to know okaa-san?" Ino asks soon in their walk, curiosity evident in her voice. Sai is surprised she's lasted this long without asking him sooner.

"She's… formidable." All Yamanaka women are a force to be reckoned with, he's come to know, but where Ino can be a storm, with the slow gathering of clouds laced with crackling lightning and unforgiving thunder followed by cleansing and soothing rain, Ren is an undertow, beckoning from unknown waters and slipping the ground from beneath the feet when least expected before guiding back to new banks to step upon.

Ino appears only pleased by his conclusion and she slips his arm through his, humming contentedly as he draws her a little closer to him. Emotions come easily with Ino, even if understanding still does not, but Sai knows now that's ok.

He knows what it's like to be washed blank, to feel trapped and numbed in his own mind. He relapses into this mindset periodically, a force of habit he can't shake off even now.

But there is no blankness with Ino and Ren; only the feeling of tilled earth and fresh starts and something promising ready to sink root and grow.

4.

When Sai comes early in the morning now, he slips through the front of the flower shop and enters the side door leading to the house.

He finds the kitchen easily and navigates it with the ease of long practice, taking down cups and locating the container of green tea powder.

Whisking together a pot of tea and pouring out three cups is routine, as is setting them on the small kitchen table crowned with a handful of vibrant violets. His drawings are pinned everywhere: on the walls, on the fridge, framed on the counters, courtesy of the combined forces that are Ino and Ren.

They are startling to him, even as he knows himself to be their creator. Every drawing has a splash of colour on it: a ruddy red, a muted orange, a vivid blue, a honeyed yellow. What he finds most surprising is now natural and evocative they are.

Even now, titling works comes hard to him; but Sai knows, the process is easier when he has a more profound emotional attachment.

Two different gaits against the wooden floors greet him, followed by a peck on the cheek from a sleep-tousled Ino and a warm wrinkle-bracketed smile from Ren, a routine that they have embraced him into as well.

As Ino and Ren join him around the kitchen table, a blend of warmth, comfort, and belonging defined by thirds and green teas and violets, Sai tucks the moment into his heart to remember and to feel; and titles this _home_.

* * *

 **AN:** A super happy birthday to a most wonderful person and amazing friend, madhattressdelux! A gift to you, you beautiful soul and partner in angst and wonder of headcanons. I hope you have the most incredibly lovely day ever, as your incredibly lovely self only deserves! A first foray into something vaguely Saiino for you (though this was pretty fun and surprising to write). Thanks for reading!


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